"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Marco...

Nobody's wrong all the time. Well, except maybe for every current and former R presidential candidate. In my case, I correctly predicted from the very beginning (me, and billions of others) that the nominee would be Mitt. Now for the second time: his veep choice will be Marco Rubio.

Again, the signs are obvious. Rubio has gone from "no way" to "no comment." He's about to give a "major" foreign policy speech. He's shadowing Romney all over the map. He's Latino. He's from Florida. He's a teabagger favorite. He's a Mormon-Evangelical-Catholic. What's not to like?

And he's hard-line on hard-right issues: abortion, immigration, taxes. Nor is he much enamored of compromise or bipartisanship, far as I can tell. He's also good-looking, smart, and unlike Romney is charismatic and a good speaker.

I think he'd be a brilliant choice for Romney, and it'd relieve a lot of anxiety on the right. With Rubio on it, it'd be a tougher ticket to beat.

Still, it will (or ought to) come down to message, and to the very different priorities of the two main candidates. The question (to which the answer, I'm pretty sure, is "no") is whether Ds will be able to be heard over the coming blast of negative and dishonest ads ready to be financed by a handful of billionaires behind Romney; the question (to which I'm pretty sure the answer is "yes") is whether voters are okay with a small group of very rich men (the link is to an excellent, if chilling, article by Frank Rich) with a very self-centered agenda determining our next president, and having him beholden to them ever after.

1 comment:

Solid Post Sid, and my only problem with Rubio is he looks like the little spanish kid on that "Leave it to Beaver" episode,You remember the one, where Eddie Haskel, who knew some Spanish, taught mono-lingual Beaver a Spanish Phrase, to say to his new Spanish-Speaking Friend..Of course since it was Eddie Haskel, the phrase was "You have the nose of a Pig" and Hilarity Ensued...And do I detect some Dis-Respect of those with mixed upbringings?SOME of us, His Barak-Ness and Me included aren't lucky enough to have 2 parents who worship the same Surpreme being.My Dad, for instance, he didn't give a Rats Patootie that my Mom didn't worship Hey-Zeuss, just that she had/has a great Ass...In fact, if the 1950's Immigration laws were a little different, good chance I'd be Moe-Hammed,Jug-Dish, or Wang-Chung Drackman...And I may be the only kid in America who went to Hebrew AND Catholic School...IN THE SAME(Calendar) YEAR...OK, you try finding a Jewish School in North Dakota...

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™